by James Rouch
Slabs of concrete and masses of gravel pounded and peppered the farmhouse, smashing every last pane.
‘I’ve got them.’ Swivelling the command box, Hyde brought it to bear on the T84 arid pair of APCs that were fast closing in on them. His index finger stabbed down, and nothing happened. He got the same result from the other buttons he tried. ‘They’ve got the cables.’
Supported by fire from a battery of self-propelled guns on the far side of the river, the infantry vehicles and their attendant tank were still coming on. The T84 opened up, its stabilised gun staying locked on target as the hull followed the undulations of collapsed field drains. A two-storey wing was struck by the shell, and had most of its roof lifted off by an explosion that filled its windows with flame. At eight hundred yards the APCs joined in, rounds from their 73mm main guns punching into the outbuildings. A large greenhouse dissolved in a cascade of shining shards as a shell detonated inside.
Kurt and Libby tumbled into the room. They were white with powdered plaster and their NBC suits were scorched and slashed. The German was swearing passionately and incomprehensibly as he extracted a long sliver of lathing from his arm.
‘One minute we were looking out of the attic,’ Libby had to pause to spit dust, ‘the next the ruddy floor had gone and we were coming down faster than we went up.’
‘We can’t do any more here.’ Hyde began pulling the leads from the box. ‘Might be an idea to pull back while we still can. Once those battle taxis start dropping their passengers it won’t take them long to cut us off. This place is pretty isolated.’
The men were hanging on his next words, Revell knew that. In effect the decision had already been made for him. Their teeth had been drawn and now it was only sensible to get out while they could. A broad stretch of open farmland behind the house would have to be traversed before they made it to the comparative safety of distant woods. For a short while, the Russian infantry’s preoccupation with the farm would give them that chance.
But he hated having to retreat, the job only half done. With the remaining ten missiles they might have inflicted sufficient damage to force the column to turn around. Instead, they had to be the ones to turn and run.
‘Smash what we can’t carry. We’ll be moving fast.’ The major ducked instinctively as more shell fragments smacked into the house. A seat from the Volvo had come to rest on the window box, and hung precariously for a moment, filling the room with white smoke as it smouldered, before falling off to complete the journey the explosives had started it on. ‘We’ll pick up Clarence, and Andrea on the way.’
Five hundred yards away the tank had stopped, and was maintaining a steady fire in support of the APCs which were still coming on, making good use of their own armaments as they did.
The corridor and stairs were filled with the wreckage of smashed furniture, sagging plasterboard and broken beams. Debris cluttered most of the rooms they passed, but others were curiously untouched by the devastation, save for their broken windows.
A still-settling heap of rubble filled the porch, almost completely blocking the door. Accurate bursts of heavy machine gun fire raked the house front and ricocheted wildly from the surface of the drive in showers of gravel.
Revell found a downstairs window from which he could make a safe reconnaissance of the stable block where the couple had set up their post. Sparks flew thickly about it from a burning woodpile close by. There was no way out of the place that was not swept by the Russian automatic fire.
The troop carriers had slowed, but were still advancing; the couple would have to make their move soon. Receiving no acknowledgement of his urgent instructions to them, he put the respirator mask to his face again and repeated it. Clarence briefly appeared at a doorway, waved, and disappeared inside again.
Revell watched the seconds flickering by on his Omega. What the hell was keeping them? Would the sniper send her first, or would he make the run to test the dangers? It was fruitless to speculate. The miniature liquid crystal bars built and destroyed the seconds, telling him he would know soon enough.
Arriving in a flat trajectory at virtually point-blank range, the round fired by the T84 gave no warning of its approach. It scored a direct hit. The stable block fell apart, collapsing in a welter of shattered bricks and beams.
He wasn’t conscious of any noise. To Revell’s eyes it seemed the single-storey structure broke up in silent slow motion, first bulging outwards as the shell exploded in its heart, then disintegrating as the roof that had been lifted off fell back and found no walls to support it. Only a half-buried saddle and horseshoes nailed to jutting splintered rafters gave any clue as to what the mound of rubble might once have been.
‘Bugger,’ Hyde had witnessed the destruction as well, ‘he was a bloody good sniper. Stupid way for him to go, after all he’s been through. Pretty much the same way as his wife and kids.’
It took an effort, but Revell fought down the urge to rush out and claw at the mound. It would serve no useful purpose to add his body to the ruin. He scrutinised the tank. There was nothing he could do now, but he would know it again. If the opportunity arose ... and he’d make it... he’d extract a bloody revenge...
‘Get them moving, Sergeant. Don’t let them bunch.’ Kurt was the one who set the pace as they ran towards the trees a good half a kilometre away. Behind them, the shelling and machine gunning roared to a crescendo as the APCs closed on their objective.
Hurdling a flooded ditch, Cohen slipped on landing and sprawled in the mud. Shit, he’d have to convert some of his haul into paper, the flak-jacket weighed him down like a lead suit and, added to the bulk of his NBC outfit, slowed him to half the others’ speed.
Maybe he’d mail some of his loot back home, have Manny get a price for it next time he went into Chicago. And then again, maybe not. His brother-in-law was too full of good ideas, and too full of himself. Trust within a family is a fine thing, but at four thousand miles that was stretching trust just a little too far. And if Ruth saw the jewellery… once she tried it on, it’d be easier to cut out her heart while she was still breathing than to get her to part with it again. He’d better dispose of it himself. He’d get the best price he could when he was next in Koblenz or Bonn. So it was a buyer’s market, better some than none.
‘Come on, Corp, must be those new stripes slowing you down.’ Cohen felt Dooley’s huge hands clamping on his shoulders and dragging him to his feet. The moment’s rest had done him good, his chest didn’t hurt anymore. ‘Shame about the girl. Waste of a nice arse.’ Dooley glanced back at the collection of buildings. It was surprising, apart from a little smoke and a few chunks out of the house, it hardly looked at all damaged. ‘You ready?’ ‘Why the concern?’ Cohen set off at a jog.
Dooley took the radio-man’s pack from him, added it to his own considerable load and kept pace alongside. ‘Don’t you know? I’m your heir, I am. When you go down for keeps I’ll be the first one along to pick up the pieces. The pieces that are worth money, that is. From now until your death rattle you have me for a buddy, every minute of every hour we’re in action. What’s up, don’t you like the idea?’
‘I should be grateful? A vulture for a friend I don’t need. And about that death rattle. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it. You should live so long as to make a profit out of this bloodsucking scheme.’ ‘Yeah? Well I reckon I’ll be collecting on the deal real soon. See, I’m gonna bill you every time I save your life, or carry your pack, or...’
A spurt of speed, a quick wrench and Cohen had retrieved the radio before Dooley could stop him. ‘You hanging about I can’t help; you getting your hands on my money I can.’ Cohen patted one of his full pockets. ‘Break your heart, not my bank.’
An ‘over’ from the barrage going down around the farm dug a crater uncomfortably close to the two men, showering them with liquid soil, worms and soggy heads of wild corn. Both of them hunched lower, and conserved their breath for running.
Dooley was annoyed. Shit, what a tight-w
ad… but he had patience and the way the war was going, he wouldn’t have to be patient for too long. The Zone saw a hell of a turnover in personnel, a shell could turn the little Yid over at any time. Just like one had that limey sniper and the German broad. Jesus what a waste that was… that beautiful arse, what a waste...
Clarence scrabbled at the collapsed masonry, not caring what injury he did his hands as he pushed and threw the rubble aside. He saw a movement, too regular to be settlement, crawled to the tangle of splintered roof beams and began to remove the mass of tiles they supported. An opening appeared, the last few shards slithered and crashed about him, and he was suddenly afraid to look inside the hole that had appeared.
The last time he had done that, what had looked back at him had been so horrible, so pitiful, and just recognisable as one of his own children. Then it had been a Russian bomber, now it was a shell, and Andrea, not his family; but he was still afraid of what he would see. Not daring to look, he turned his face to the sky and felt the light rain wash the dust from his skin.
There were so many hatreds in him, but the greatest and most passionate he aimed in that direction. ‘God’s will’ the priest had said, ‘suffer little children’... and he thought again of those ruined young bodies and his darling wife, and wished he’d not suppressed the temptation to smash the platitude-mouthing old fool in the face.
‘Take this, take it.’
The sniper saw the Viper rocket launcher being thrust out towards him. He stretched down and hauled the projector out of the way, then reached for her hand. It was bloody - missing two nails and the tip of the thumb.
Both the APCs and the tank were now concentrating their fire on the farmhouse, while the barrage from the supporting guns had shifted to the fields on either side. The shelling ceased abruptly as he pulled Andrea clear.
Her hands and face were flecked and streaked with blood, and a large livid bruise showed on her left cheek. She stood up, shook the dust from her hair, and Clarence knew she was alright. He reached towards her and pulled a cobweb from her hair. It was the first time he had ever touched her, almost their first physical contact of any kind. The undeclared barrier that existed between them came down again, Clarence triggering it by abruptly withdrawing his hand.
‘They’ll be coming in now. We need better cover, I’ll go first.’ He meant to sprint, but every joint and muscle ached from the pounding his body had taken, forcing him to a slower pace. Machine gun bullets struck the ground about him, drilling holes in the corner of the house as he reached its sanctuary.
Andrea followed, losing precious seconds as she slipped on the loose piled bricks. She was halfway when the sharply raked frontal armour of the leading personnel carrier ploughed through the sagging remains of a tractor shed and into view.
Every crew-port on the vehicle was open, and from each projected the bullet- spitting barrel of the infantry’s AKM’s. The bullets chased Andrea as she threw herself down and rolled to a firing position, shouldering the rocket tube. Marching spurts of gravel and stone cut towards her as she took aim.
FIVE
Ignoring the bullets striking sparks from the stone about her, Andrea took careful aim and fired the rocket at the troop carrier’s hull side.
Capable of defeating twelve inches of solid armour, the APCs thin plate provided hardly any resistance to the high velocity jet of molten explosive, unleashed by the rocket’s impact and detonation immediately below the vehicle’s turret, the commander’s position.
As though it had struck a cliff face the APC stopped dead, and its rear doors flew open as a pillar of spiralling flame burst from the turret hatch.
Nerve-shredding screams came from the vehicle. Clarence could hear them clearly above the erratic crackling of ammunition cooking off. A figure staggered from the wreck, wreathed in hoops of flame. Levelling his rifle he brought the reeling Russian into his sights, and held his fire. The apparition collapsed and squirmed in the mud, vainly trying to defeat the rippling hell encasing it. A last arching contortion and it was still, only the guttering flame and ugly black smoke giving it movement.
Discarding the single shot rocket tube, Andrea ran to the cover of the house. ‘The other is close, I can hear it...’
Slinging his rifle, Clarence reached out to take her arm and propel her away, but instead suddenly ripped her M16 from her grasp and swung the butt at her head. As she half-ducked, half-stumbled aside, the crushing blow grazed past her and hit something soft and yielding.
The blow he had aimed at the apparition had stopped it, and now it stood stock still, the bone-exposing claws of its charred hands still extended towards Andrea. A desperate hooting noise compounded of agony and distress came from the sufferer, as he rocked on the burnt stumps of his ankles. Every stitch of clothing had been consumed by the flame that still played amongst hanging ribbons and lace-like pendants of sloughing flesh, and the white of exposed bone showed on the head and arms of the anti-tank rocket’s victim.
This time Clarence didn’t hesitate, bringing up the rifle to fire. Andrea’s hand clamped hard on the barrel and forced it down. ‘No, let him live while he can.’ She snatched the weapon back. ‘He has done it to others, let him feel what it is like.’
An imploring talon reached out for the sniper and he fended it off with a sweeping blow. It was too much for the furnace-roasted limb and the forearm snapped off at the elbow, eliciting a shrill screech from the Russian.
Clarence retched, thinking for a moment that he was going to throw up. Frantically, he scraped the wrist of his suit against the wall to wipe away the adhering blood-dappled soot-stained tissue. This wasn’t how he wanted to fight his war: he was a sniper, his war was clinically clean, precise, remote. It didn’t involve contact with walking corpses, loathsome spectres that had no right to be alive. Death for him was always at a distance, only on that messy job in the Hanover salient had he ever seen, close to, the faces of the men he was killing. Even then the action had been so wild, so fast, that the faces had blurred and merged until he couldn’t recall any individual one.
The burn victim took another tottering step forward, and before Andrea could move again to stop him Clarence unslung his rifle and pumped three fast shots into the sufferer’s upper chest and face. Blackened flesh and shards of bone burst from the Russian under the devastating impact of the big dum-dum bullets. They instantly and thoroughly completed the work of destruction the fire had started. Pink foam bubbled from the scorched cavity where the bottom jaw had been. A remaining eye stared accusingly at Clarence, made grotesquely large by the shrivelling of the skin about it, bulging out over the protruding splinters of cheekbone, restrained only by a fire-welded lid.
Shooting from the hip, Clarence put a last round into the unseeing eye. That entire side of the cadaver’s head ruptured and broke open, scattering lumps of white sponge and matted tissues of crisped hair. Andrea tugged at his arm. ‘We have little time...’
Beside them, the wall bulged and shed flakes of brick and mortar as a shell exploded inside the house.
Their escape route through the farmyard had been turned into an assault course. The deluge of high explosive had crudely dismantled and scattered the remains of tractors and harvesters, cluttering the area with razor sharp sheets of steel and blazing tyres. A row of silos spouted feed-pellets and fertiliser from irregular holes. Oil and fuel from split drums added another hazard. They passed between the dismembered components of a grain conveyer and then they were clear, racing across the pockmarked fields for the far trees.
As they ran and stumbled across the shell-churned ground the distinctive discordant sounds of a Soviet V6 diesel came to them, spurring them to greater effort. The engine note rose to a thundering bellow, accompanied by the grinding squeal of abused tracks. They were just halfway when bullets began scything the long grass beside them.
‘Hold it.’ Revell had to shout to make himself heard to the others, who were already plunging into the dense undergrowth. He’d held back on reaching th
e fringe of the trees, waiting for Dooley and Cohen to catch up, now he hurriedly brought his binoculars into use.
‘Damn it, I know they’re there, I saw them.’ Again and again he quartered the ground where he’d seen the two figures go down. Only the regular stabs of flame from the secondary turret armament of a troop carrier, partly concealed by the farm buildings, kept him searching after he’d otherwise have given up. The fact that the Ruskies were taking an interest in the same strip of pasture was all he needed to reassure himself that he could still trust his senses.
‘How much smoke can we make?’
‘Nothing like enough.’ Hyde too had seen the mud-plastered forms crouched in the shallow crater, and had anticipated the officer’s question. ‘Just three 40mm grenades. Even if we put them down right on the button, with this breeze...’ He didn’t need to elaborate.
‘Maybe they’ll get fed up waiting, and piss off.’ Having failed to beg the use of the sergeant’s binoculars, Dooley now hovered about the major. ‘Somehow I don’t think so. That load of Reds must be good and bloody sore at us by now. Looks like this bunch are staying behind to do a thorough job.’ He knew it was no more than a gesture, the weapon was useless at that range, but Burke set up the M60 anyway.
Having annoyed Dooley immensely by obtaining a loan of the glasses first, Libby examined the distant couple. ‘They’re not moving.’
‘There’s not much room for them to move, not without offering themselves as a target.’ There was no question of pulling out now, Revell knew that. Even when he’d felt certain Andrea and the sniper were dead, he’d been reluctant; now he was positive they were still alive, there was no way he was going to leave until he was sure she was safe.
And all the time the rest of the enemy column would be bulldozing its way towards Frankfurt. In two hours it could be out of the Zone, and by spreading terror among the West German civilian population, be clogging every road and railway and airport with refugees. The hand to mouth logistical support for the NATO forces fighting south of the city would be cut to a trickle virtually immediately. Defeat, and a further extension of the Zone, would follow fast. ‘We’ll wait for them to make a break, then we’ll try to draw the APCs fire and give what cover we can.’